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rOLUME 1 NO. 7
250
NOVEMBER 1979
The newspaper from the Twin
Gay and Lesbian Community
175,000 Gentle Angry People March on Washington
By Tim Campbell
I arrived at the march staging area just before 11:00 a.m. Every
space was taken. By high noon, waiting lines of lesbians and gays
stretched ten deep for eight blocks out toward the Washington
Monument on both sides of the street. "It was a real high. " said Brad
Golden, "as I walked through the first pass of bodies. I thought I was
going over a bridge. " It was 3:00 p.m. before the last of the marchers had made it down the seventeen blocks to the rally site at the
monument. When the crowd peaked, between 175,000 and
200,000 gay rights supporters raised clenched fists in the air shouting "We are everywhere! We are everywhere!" Jill Peterson, who
had driven in from Minneapolis on Thursday called it "An overwhelming explosion of freedom, pride and solidarity." Approximately seventy Twin Citians were spotted over the weekend.
Jim Hesley was there with a fine Minnesota banner and about forty
locals managed to find it amidst al! those people. Rick Hunter and
John Hanson got there on Saturday in time for marshall training and
Ed Horton and Mary Puff stayed over 'til Monday to lobby Minnesota legislators. Philip Willkie brough one group of ten, including
two lesbians, via "Fruitabago. " Pat Schwartz and the Locker Room
crowd as well as a Mankato group joined the Freedom Train from
the West Coast at Chicago. (Apparently. Schwartz had given a copy
of Positively Gay to everyone on the train, and he was passing them
out again on the mall. Thank you Pat.) Dan Pierre brought one car
ful as did Ed Horton and several others. Steve Ault, co-chair of the
March on Washington looked out at the crowd stretched five blocks
from the stage to the monument and summed things up, "No longer
will be be picked off city by city and person by person. We must be
defeated in isolation or victorious in unity. "
Segments of the march encompassed an absolutely mind-
boggling diversity. The Revolutionary Socialist League organized
themselves several blocks away from the staging area and arrived
with an impressive array of red banners chanting "Gay oppression is
inhuman. What's the solution? Revolution!" Their group was about
150 strong, mixed by race and sex. The crowds on the mall went
wild with applause and you knew the morning was kicked off and
firey. Clint Mohcrief, of Houston, promptly blew his whistle, raised
his baton in the air and the Montrose Marching Band stepped out in
cadence to the tune "The Yellow Rose of Texas." Meanwhile, a
black lesbian blurted out directions to groups trying to figure out
where to line up over a huge public address system ten feet in the
air.
The spirit of competition between Texas and California was
evident. Ray Hill, emcee of a Houston gay radio show, said that
they had raised $11,500 by throwing a Gay Day at Astro World, a
Houston amusement park. Dallas boasted that they had raised
$4,000 in one night for a billboard campaign designed by Mary Jane
Westbrook and Debbie Shaffer. Texas raised another $3,850 at the
Dallas Alliance for Individual Rights Bar Owners Drag Show held at
the D-3, one of Dallas' largest clubs. Greg Hartle, director of the Los
Angeles Gay Men's Chorus said they raised $25,000 in three weeks
by singing in the bars and parsing the hat pius throwing, a festival
with a spaghetti feed and flea rmirket. Skip Perlrnan, an L.A.
businessman, contributed a $7,000 guarantee. The sound system
alone for the mass rally cost $5,000. It included at least eighty amplifiers and stood two stories high by 200 feet long. There were thir-
ty-seveji delegates from Alaska, twenty-two from Honolulu and
groups from British Columbia and Sidney, Australia. The east coast
contingents were so large you could not tell where they started and
stopped. Chicago and Cincinatti had the largest groups from the
Midwest and Iowa brought up three Winnebagos. Bars and
ballteams from both Houston and New York were there in group, as
were the Gay Youth of New York, the American Psychiatric
Association Gay Caucus, and the New York Gay Independent-
Democrats. Adam Du Baugh and the Metropolitan Community
Church contingent led by a barrage of religious groups including
Dignity, Integrity, Quakers, Gay Mormons, and many others. Yale
lesbians were there, as were college groups from Harvard, Vassar,
Syracuse University, Dartmouth, Bryn Mam, Haverford and Swar-
thmore. The Gay Teachers Association and the Metropolitan
Business Association of Chicago and everything imaginable in bet
ween were on hand--not to forget one little old lady with a sign "Piss
on Anita."
As the crowds filed by. each group had its own chants. The mid
Atlantic states belted out stanza after stanza of "When the Gays go
Marching In. " The Alliance for Labor and Community Action chanted "Working People Unite Same enemy. Same fight." New Yorkers passed the mounted police in front of the U.S. Treasury lilting
"Faggots, fairies and dykes, oh my!" right in the streets. Not a horse
budged. The Pittsburgh contingent was singing "We are the gay-ays,
mighty mighty gay-ays." Massachusetts bellowed "We are everywhere. We will be free, " and the Michigan Organization for Human
Rights was singing "Homosexuality is rising for all to see. The chains
of yesterday are gone. Tomorrow we'll be free" to the tune of
"Amazing Grace. " As New York's Boots & Saddle ballteam passed
the sole protester of the march who had a huge sign "Repent or
Perish," team members shouted "We repented 'til '69. Now we're
flourishing." The Revolutionary Socialists League had their slogan
"It's right to rebel!" emblazoned on shirts and banners. And the Gertrude Stein Club proclaimed, "We grow stronger gay by gay. "
The Rally
As the last of the marchers filed on to the grounds of the Washington Monument, emcee Robin Tyler thrilled the crowd by announcing "it's great to know we have outdrawn the pope." The clouds
parted, and an overcast day turned into a bath of sunlight. The Rev.
Troy Perry of Metropolitan Community Church couldn't let that
pass without comment, and reported "The day Anita Bryant launched her campaign in Dade County Florida, it snowed in Miami. " Arlie
Scott, Vice President of NOW told the crowd, "We're moving from
gay pride to gay politics. Listen America, we are going to force you
to live up to the American dream. You are going to have to deal
with us in the 1980's. " Steve Ault, of the National March Organizing
Committee added, "If the great American pie is rotten, don't eat of
it. Throw it out." Charlotte Bunch, a Lesbian feminist theorist said
"We are here to lead the country in the struggle of the 1980's--a
decade like this country has never seen before. 'America and the
Continued on page 3
Tyler Stumps for Gay Rights
Nationally known comic Robin Tyler
stopped in Minneapolis on October 7 to
drum up suppport for the gay rights
movement and to rally people for the
National March on Washington. She is
the first prominent entertainer to come
out and back the movement as a
lesbian. Tyler was raised in Canada,
graduated from the Manitoba Theater
Center and broke into show business as
"Stacey Morgan, Female Impersonator" at a New York night club. She
appears regularly at the Comedy Store
in Hollywood and has worked on
feminist pilots for ABC TV.
Tyler's approach to gay and lesbian
rights might be termed "avant garde" in
the midwest. "This is not a movement
about crotch politics. There is no such
thing as a civil rights movement from
the waist down," she said. "They
(bigots) don't care what we do in the
privacy of our bedrooms. The root of
all oppression is economic. They care
because we challenge their whole
economic system that depends on the
patriarchal nuclear family and the treatment of women like they live to use
products so that the large corporations
can sell, sell, sell." She points out that it
is only when we come out of the closet
and prove that there is some other way
to do it all, that the enemy gets angry.
Tyler gets particularly riled about the
double standards of visibility applied to
gay and straight relationships. "When
some heterosexual shows us a picture
of her family, it's called 'sharing'. When
/ show somebody a picture of my lover
it's called 'flaunting'. Well, 1 think it's
time more lesbians and gays start
sharing, " Tyler said. She is equally upset with the low level of demands set by
bcjth gays and feminists. "Tolerance
and understanding are not acceptable
words to me. Blacks don't ask for
tolerance. Take the TV commercials
for example. 'You've come a long way
baby!' and 'Promise them anything, but
give them Arpege.' If they put 'You've
come a long way negro' or 'Promise
them anything but give them watermelon' on television, the blacks would
kill 'em." And she minces no words
with monied lesbians and gays who
shun the movement. "I'm not in this
fight so that rich guys can feel better
about themselves and soak up greater
social chicness. I tell them 'If you don't
come out of the closet, we're goign to
hand you a flashlight and let you write
your checks from there,' " she said,
adding "Money without consciousness
around the issues is wasted. "
Tyler sees gays and lesbians as the
natural leaders for hard days about to
come-- "Our society tries to immobilize
us with fear. There will be no more gas,
no more food, no money. Well when
people see the system is not working
and there is no money for skyrocketing rents, well it's like a pimple-■
when it pops the people will be on the
streets again. They are doing it now in
the anti-nuclear movement, and here
in California, people are demanding affordable housing. When people hit the
streets again, it's the gays who will have
the strength and courage to lead. We
are survivors, not victims. Victims accept oppression, survivors fight back. "
An over-riding concern that Robin
Tyler addressed while here was the rift
between gay men and lesbians. (Only
about 10% of her audience was male,
with the staff of the Locker Room
Health Club creating the only visible
male group support.) Tyler is keenly
aware of the problems this tension creates across the country, but says "You
can work together if there is a really
healthy respect for the difference between gay women and gay men." For
example, she believes that looks-ism
and agism are epidemic problems in
tbs male community and alienate
lesbians. "Agism does not exist in the
women's community, "she claims.
On the other hand, she points out
that the tension between older lesbian
couples who adopted a role playing
butch and fern life style irks younger
feminists. One of the funnier moments
during her stand up routine came when
she asked the feminist audience, "How
Robin Tyler Stumps for Gay Rights
in Minneapolis
many of you are into roles?" No one
admitted it and Tyler retorted, "Liars."
She failed to make a clear statement of
the issues she believes causes the male-
female animosity.
Tyler is firmly convinced that culture
and entertainment are the best vehicles
for propelling the movement forward
saying, "Culture is an organizing,
revolutionary tool. . . As artists, we do
draw more." She encourages men to
form their own production companies
like Persimmon Productions that
brought her show to town.
Tyler was also very supportive of the
San Francisco rioters, pointing out that
"gays have been violated for centuries.
They were burned at the stake during
the Middle Ages. That's how they got
the name 'faggot.' The Puritans
drowned them and most recently they
have been violated with psychosurgery and shock treatment. Don't talk
to me about one little bit of violence as
hurting us. I call that fighting back. "
Tyler's statements were pretty strong
talk for the local community, but she
had most of her feminist audience
laughing and clapping. The handful of
men feminists in the audience beat the
women to their feet with standing
ovations on at least two occasions.
Barbara Hubbard, one of the
organizers of the production said, "I
think her politics are right on for me.
She was a shot in the arm. She got me
fired up to keep going."
Robin Tyler's unique background
and personal genius blend a perfect
appreciation of lesbian-feminism and
the gay world. She offers the first encouraging ray of hope for reunification
of two movements.

rOLUME 1 NO. 7
250
NOVEMBER 1979
The newspaper from the Twin
Gay and Lesbian Community
175,000 Gentle Angry People March on Washington
By Tim Campbell
I arrived at the march staging area just before 11:00 a.m. Every
space was taken. By high noon, waiting lines of lesbians and gays
stretched ten deep for eight blocks out toward the Washington
Monument on both sides of the street. "It was a real high. " said Brad
Golden, "as I walked through the first pass of bodies. I thought I was
going over a bridge. " It was 3:00 p.m. before the last of the marchers had made it down the seventeen blocks to the rally site at the
monument. When the crowd peaked, between 175,000 and
200,000 gay rights supporters raised clenched fists in the air shouting "We are everywhere! We are everywhere!" Jill Peterson, who
had driven in from Minneapolis on Thursday called it "An overwhelming explosion of freedom, pride and solidarity." Approximately seventy Twin Citians were spotted over the weekend.
Jim Hesley was there with a fine Minnesota banner and about forty
locals managed to find it amidst al! those people. Rick Hunter and
John Hanson got there on Saturday in time for marshall training and
Ed Horton and Mary Puff stayed over 'til Monday to lobby Minnesota legislators. Philip Willkie brough one group of ten, including
two lesbians, via "Fruitabago. " Pat Schwartz and the Locker Room
crowd as well as a Mankato group joined the Freedom Train from
the West Coast at Chicago. (Apparently. Schwartz had given a copy
of Positively Gay to everyone on the train, and he was passing them
out again on the mall. Thank you Pat.) Dan Pierre brought one car
ful as did Ed Horton and several others. Steve Ault, co-chair of the
March on Washington looked out at the crowd stretched five blocks
from the stage to the monument and summed things up, "No longer
will be be picked off city by city and person by person. We must be
defeated in isolation or victorious in unity. "
Segments of the march encompassed an absolutely mind-
boggling diversity. The Revolutionary Socialist League organized
themselves several blocks away from the staging area and arrived
with an impressive array of red banners chanting "Gay oppression is
inhuman. What's the solution? Revolution!" Their group was about
150 strong, mixed by race and sex. The crowds on the mall went
wild with applause and you knew the morning was kicked off and
firey. Clint Mohcrief, of Houston, promptly blew his whistle, raised
his baton in the air and the Montrose Marching Band stepped out in
cadence to the tune "The Yellow Rose of Texas." Meanwhile, a
black lesbian blurted out directions to groups trying to figure out
where to line up over a huge public address system ten feet in the
air.
The spirit of competition between Texas and California was
evident. Ray Hill, emcee of a Houston gay radio show, said that
they had raised $11,500 by throwing a Gay Day at Astro World, a
Houston amusement park. Dallas boasted that they had raised
$4,000 in one night for a billboard campaign designed by Mary Jane
Westbrook and Debbie Shaffer. Texas raised another $3,850 at the
Dallas Alliance for Individual Rights Bar Owners Drag Show held at
the D-3, one of Dallas' largest clubs. Greg Hartle, director of the Los
Angeles Gay Men's Chorus said they raised $25,000 in three weeks
by singing in the bars and parsing the hat pius throwing, a festival
with a spaghetti feed and flea rmirket. Skip Perlrnan, an L.A.
businessman, contributed a $7,000 guarantee. The sound system
alone for the mass rally cost $5,000. It included at least eighty amplifiers and stood two stories high by 200 feet long. There were thir-
ty-seveji delegates from Alaska, twenty-two from Honolulu and
groups from British Columbia and Sidney, Australia. The east coast
contingents were so large you could not tell where they started and
stopped. Chicago and Cincinatti had the largest groups from the
Midwest and Iowa brought up three Winnebagos. Bars and
ballteams from both Houston and New York were there in group, as
were the Gay Youth of New York, the American Psychiatric
Association Gay Caucus, and the New York Gay Independent-
Democrats. Adam Du Baugh and the Metropolitan Community
Church contingent led by a barrage of religious groups including
Dignity, Integrity, Quakers, Gay Mormons, and many others. Yale
lesbians were there, as were college groups from Harvard, Vassar,
Syracuse University, Dartmouth, Bryn Mam, Haverford and Swar-
thmore. The Gay Teachers Association and the Metropolitan
Business Association of Chicago and everything imaginable in bet
ween were on hand--not to forget one little old lady with a sign "Piss
on Anita."
As the crowds filed by. each group had its own chants. The mid
Atlantic states belted out stanza after stanza of "When the Gays go
Marching In. " The Alliance for Labor and Community Action chanted "Working People Unite Same enemy. Same fight." New Yorkers passed the mounted police in front of the U.S. Treasury lilting
"Faggots, fairies and dykes, oh my!" right in the streets. Not a horse
budged. The Pittsburgh contingent was singing "We are the gay-ays,
mighty mighty gay-ays." Massachusetts bellowed "We are everywhere. We will be free, " and the Michigan Organization for Human
Rights was singing "Homosexuality is rising for all to see. The chains
of yesterday are gone. Tomorrow we'll be free" to the tune of
"Amazing Grace. " As New York's Boots & Saddle ballteam passed
the sole protester of the march who had a huge sign "Repent or
Perish," team members shouted "We repented 'til '69. Now we're
flourishing." The Revolutionary Socialists League had their slogan
"It's right to rebel!" emblazoned on shirts and banners. And the Gertrude Stein Club proclaimed, "We grow stronger gay by gay. "
The Rally
As the last of the marchers filed on to the grounds of the Washington Monument, emcee Robin Tyler thrilled the crowd by announcing "it's great to know we have outdrawn the pope." The clouds
parted, and an overcast day turned into a bath of sunlight. The Rev.
Troy Perry of Metropolitan Community Church couldn't let that
pass without comment, and reported "The day Anita Bryant launched her campaign in Dade County Florida, it snowed in Miami. " Arlie
Scott, Vice President of NOW told the crowd, "We're moving from
gay pride to gay politics. Listen America, we are going to force you
to live up to the American dream. You are going to have to deal
with us in the 1980's. " Steve Ault, of the National March Organizing
Committee added, "If the great American pie is rotten, don't eat of
it. Throw it out." Charlotte Bunch, a Lesbian feminist theorist said
"We are here to lead the country in the struggle of the 1980's--a
decade like this country has never seen before. 'America and the
Continued on page 3
Tyler Stumps for Gay Rights
Nationally known comic Robin Tyler
stopped in Minneapolis on October 7 to
drum up suppport for the gay rights
movement and to rally people for the
National March on Washington. She is
the first prominent entertainer to come
out and back the movement as a
lesbian. Tyler was raised in Canada,
graduated from the Manitoba Theater
Center and broke into show business as
"Stacey Morgan, Female Impersonator" at a New York night club. She
appears regularly at the Comedy Store
in Hollywood and has worked on
feminist pilots for ABC TV.
Tyler's approach to gay and lesbian
rights might be termed "avant garde" in
the midwest. "This is not a movement
about crotch politics. There is no such
thing as a civil rights movement from
the waist down," she said. "They
(bigots) don't care what we do in the
privacy of our bedrooms. The root of
all oppression is economic. They care
because we challenge their whole
economic system that depends on the
patriarchal nuclear family and the treatment of women like they live to use
products so that the large corporations
can sell, sell, sell." She points out that it
is only when we come out of the closet
and prove that there is some other way
to do it all, that the enemy gets angry.
Tyler gets particularly riled about the
double standards of visibility applied to
gay and straight relationships. "When
some heterosexual shows us a picture
of her family, it's called 'sharing'. When
/ show somebody a picture of my lover
it's called 'flaunting'. Well, 1 think it's
time more lesbians and gays start
sharing, " Tyler said. She is equally upset with the low level of demands set by
bcjth gays and feminists. "Tolerance
and understanding are not acceptable
words to me. Blacks don't ask for
tolerance. Take the TV commercials
for example. 'You've come a long way
baby!' and 'Promise them anything, but
give them Arpege.' If they put 'You've
come a long way negro' or 'Promise
them anything but give them watermelon' on television, the blacks would
kill 'em." And she minces no words
with monied lesbians and gays who
shun the movement. "I'm not in this
fight so that rich guys can feel better
about themselves and soak up greater
social chicness. I tell them 'If you don't
come out of the closet, we're goign to
hand you a flashlight and let you write
your checks from there,' " she said,
adding "Money without consciousness
around the issues is wasted. "
Tyler sees gays and lesbians as the
natural leaders for hard days about to
come-- "Our society tries to immobilize
us with fear. There will be no more gas,
no more food, no money. Well when
people see the system is not working
and there is no money for skyrocketing rents, well it's like a pimple-■
when it pops the people will be on the
streets again. They are doing it now in
the anti-nuclear movement, and here
in California, people are demanding affordable housing. When people hit the
streets again, it's the gays who will have
the strength and courage to lead. We
are survivors, not victims. Victims accept oppression, survivors fight back. "
An over-riding concern that Robin
Tyler addressed while here was the rift
between gay men and lesbians. (Only
about 10% of her audience was male,
with the staff of the Locker Room
Health Club creating the only visible
male group support.) Tyler is keenly
aware of the problems this tension creates across the country, but says "You
can work together if there is a really
healthy respect for the difference between gay women and gay men." For
example, she believes that looks-ism
and agism are epidemic problems in
tbs male community and alienate
lesbians. "Agism does not exist in the
women's community, "she claims.
On the other hand, she points out
that the tension between older lesbian
couples who adopted a role playing
butch and fern life style irks younger
feminists. One of the funnier moments
during her stand up routine came when
she asked the feminist audience, "How
Robin Tyler Stumps for Gay Rights
in Minneapolis
many of you are into roles?" No one
admitted it and Tyler retorted, "Liars."
She failed to make a clear statement of
the issues she believes causes the male-
female animosity.
Tyler is firmly convinced that culture
and entertainment are the best vehicles
for propelling the movement forward
saying, "Culture is an organizing,
revolutionary tool. . . As artists, we do
draw more." She encourages men to
form their own production companies
like Persimmon Productions that
brought her show to town.
Tyler was also very supportive of the
San Francisco rioters, pointing out that
"gays have been violated for centuries.
They were burned at the stake during
the Middle Ages. That's how they got
the name 'faggot.' The Puritans
drowned them and most recently they
have been violated with psychosurgery and shock treatment. Don't talk
to me about one little bit of violence as
hurting us. I call that fighting back. "
Tyler's statements were pretty strong
talk for the local community, but she
had most of her feminist audience
laughing and clapping. The handful of
men feminists in the audience beat the
women to their feet with standing
ovations on at least two occasions.
Barbara Hubbard, one of the
organizers of the production said, "I
think her politics are right on for me.
She was a shot in the arm. She got me
fired up to keep going."
Robin Tyler's unique background
and personal genius blend a perfect
appreciation of lesbian-feminism and
the gay world. She offers the first encouraging ray of hope for reunification
of two movements.